Thursday, July 24, 2014

Hosting cars on a cycling zone

A cycle route in ʼs-Hertogenbosch leading to an industrial zone was not well-connected to the rest of the cycling network. To get from the normal cycle network to the start of this cycle way you had to know your way through a maze of residential back streets. It was okay to cycle there, but you really needed to know where you were going and the route was not optimised for cycling.So the city chose the best route through that residential area and decided to change the ordinary streets into cycle streets. All the streets were already in a 30km per hour (18mph) zone, but motorists certainly did not always obey this limit. To make the streets better for cycling they were completely redesigned. Before that was done, and as is usual in the Netherlands, all sewerage pipes and other utilities under the street surface were first renewed. The street profile went from a standard street designed for motor traffic with black asphalt from kerb to kerb (curb), to one that is optimised for cycling. There is now a central ‘red carpet’ of smooth red asphalt. At either side of that red asphalt there are bands of bricks that optically narrow the streets even more, but that do give drivers the opportunity to go there with their cars, when they need to pass other drivers or people cycling. Read on here.